


spring by spring

by starlies



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Sun & Moon | Pokemon Sun & Moon Versions
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Post-Game(s), School, i havent written for pokemon since i was 12 hello friends, tagged as both romantic and friendship bc i guess it's implied?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 20:02:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9458372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlies/pseuds/starlies
Summary: Post-game AU, in which Lillie and Hau decide to go to school together.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this about a month ago and almost forgot about it hello
> 
> I imagine that for Hau's personality, having to learn and appreciate Pokemon like this might be a part of growing to become kahuna? Like how Hapu says she was denied the first time she tried... maybe Hau tries, doesn't get it, but when Lillie tells him she's going to the trainer's school he feels like that might bring him closer to where he wants to be... yeah
> 
> I maybe want to elaborate on this post-game idea and include Gladion and Sun/Moon (maybe later). I really liked the friendship between Hau and Lillie in the game... poor Hau ;u;

He found her sitting by herself in the courtyard, in the splotchy light beneath an oak tree. It was odd for most of the students he knew, but quite typical of Lillie, he’d discovered. She wasn’t particularly distant, no. Lillie was just the kind of girl who appreciated time to think by herself, the kind of girl who valued the beauty and serenity of life.

Hau wondered where it came from, because he was nearly the opposite. He thought himself to be easy-going, but he wasn’t nearly as thoughtful as Lillie was.

She told him, when they started school together in Viridian City together, that she was still developing her “Z-Powered Form”. Always improving. Always growing. And he knew a part of it was because she didn’t want to be stuck under the weight of her mother’s ambitions – as she was for most of her life. Another part of it – the important part – was Moon. Moon made her realize she wanted to be more, to do more. To stir up her corner of the universe in the way only Lillie could.

He wondered if he was a part of it, too.

“Lillie?” he asked. “What are you doing here by yourself?”

She turned to him, blonde hair shifting over her shoulder and shimmering in the afternoon light. “Oh, Hau. I was just studying,” she replied. Her notebook sat open in her lap, a pink highlighter between her fingers. “Did you want to sit with me? I don’t mind.”

“Okay!” He caught a smile dance across her lips as he stepped around to sit beside her on the bench. “What are you studying?”

“Evolutionary biology,” she explained, looking down at a sheet of notes covered in neat, yet curly handwriting and half a dozen diagrams of wings – Pidgey, Pidgeotto, Pidgeot. “We’re studying how the bone structure of avian Pokemon changes through their different stages. Midterms are next week, so I wanted to clean up these notes… there’s a lot to learn.”

He leaned over her lap to get a better look at her journal. “… I don’t think I take near as much notes as you do, Lillie.”

Her reply was a short, breathy laugh. “I noticed.” The stray pieces of loose-leaf paper that tossed around in Hau’s backpack were a far cry from Lillie’s color-coded notebooks.

Hau pulled himself back up to sit upright, restoring Lillie’s personal space. Her hair was down today, he noticed – the same as when he first met her, but a little different virtue of the fact that five years had passed.

For one, she mostly abandoned her big sun hat now that they lived in Viridian City. The adjustment was peculiar – from the islands to an inland city, from their homeland to a foreign country – even with Lillie’s previous visit to Kanto after Moon became champion.

She kept true to the promise she made to Hau on that morning when they were eleven. She wrote every day, about Kanto, about the Pokemon, about the people. About her adventure. And when she told him about the school in Viridian, it was as if something _clicked_ , and he knew that was where he would go to study to take on the title of kahuna.

Of course, he made that decision after Lillie expressed how she wanted to go to study to be a professor. They could go together, he offered, and she accepted, because all journeys were made better by the support of a friend.

He caught her eyes, wide and sky-blue, gazing out at a Butterfree on the other side of the courtyard. She sighed.

“…Are you actually studying?” Hau asked. There was always a certain _look_ to Lillie when she has something on her mind, as he’d come to notice as they grew closer in the past few years.

“Midterms… are next week,” she replied, restating what she’d mentioned earlier. “And then finals. Then another semester, and another… and eventually we’ll graduate, Hau. We’ll be off towards what we’ve dreamed of.”

His expression lit up. “Yeah! Aren’t you excited?”

Lillie leaned back on her palms and closed her eyes, taking in the sweet spring air around them. “It’s like half of me is just itching for it to happen,” she said, “and the other half is in awe.”

“In awe? At what?”

“How much we’ve learned and grown, how we’re different people from when we first traveled around Alola… and yet the same.” She opened her eyes, still looking out. “How we had such capacity to change in the first place, and how we can use our own growth to shape our world. It’s an amazing power, I think. What we have on the world.”

“Haha, like a Z-Power, right?”

A gentle smile. “That’s me – Z-powered Lillie!”

Hau laughed and motioned to her notebook. “I bet that one day, people are going to come to this school and take notes about her. The girl who used her Z-power to shake the world – Lillie!”

“I hope so,” she said with a chuckle. She was optimistic and good-spirited, but humble to a fault.

“Aw, don’t hope it’ll happen. _Know_ it will happen! I believe in you, and so does everyone else you’ve ever met.”

She blinked and stared at Hau with rosy cheeks. “Really?”

“Of course,” he replied as he bent over and plucked a daisy from the earth beneath them. With the stem between his fingers, he pulled it up and stuck it behind Lillie’s ear, brushing her hair around her ear in the process. “You’re going to be the greatest professor there ever was.”

The smile Lillie wore was warm and kind enough to turn Mount Silver into a beach. “Thank you, Hau. But… you too! I believe you’ll become kahuna after learning about Pokemon here, that the totem Pokemon will appoint you.”

“That’s why I can’t wait to go back to Alola, to see what the deities think after I’ve grown so much.” He laughed. “That, and malasadas…”

Lillie joined him, the light, clear tones of her giggle blending with the heartiness of Hau’s laugh. “Kahuna, professorship, malasadas… we have a lot to look forward to, don’t we?”

“Yeah,” he replied. _Together._ Because as much as he yearned for that day in the future to come, he promised to enjoy every moment of his journey on the way there, with his Pokemon, with Moon, with Lillie. Every step of their adventure was pivotal, and he wouldn’t ignore that; by the time he got where he was going, every one of those steps would make all the difference.


End file.
